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Why is the Reliability of the New Testament Important?
When I was in high school I took a class in ancient history. I was about sixteen years old at the time, and became enthralled (with as much enthusiasm as a sixteen year old high school student can muster) as we began to study various civilizations and important figures in the distant past, starting several thousand years BC and slowly working our way chronologically forward. As we neared what I erroneously assumed would be “year zero”1, the thought occurred to me that we were coming to the time when Jesus lived.

I had never been to church and had little interest in religion. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the prospect of learning what we could know about Jesus by means of historical inquiry. I was rather surprised, then, when our class quickly sped past Jesus' time without so much as mentioning Jesus' name.

What did I, as a young student, conclude from this omission? My thinking at the time went like this: If Jesus was a real historical person, we would have studied such an influential figure like him in a class about ancient history. Since we hadn't studied him, he mustn't have been a real person, and therefore the Christian faith was merely a bunch of fanciful stories with no historical basis.

Was my reasoning correct? I had never studied the evidence, nor considered reasons why we neglected to study Jesus in our class.2 However, I did get one thing right: I recognized that Christianity is a historically based religion. Its impetus was not merely a person's sudden enlightenment (as in Buddhism, for example). It is instead based on events that occurred in history: history centered, and not merely a philosophy of life.

This is the reason that the apostle Paul (who wrote a large portion of the New Testament) writes to his fellow Christians that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” (1 Cor 15:17) If Jesus was not really raised, the Christian faith is actually a Christian farce; or, as historian Hugo Staudinger put it, if the New Testament writings “are really only tales which have been made up,” then “they can quite legitimately be replaced by other tales.”3 The idea that a person could retain their Christian

1 2 3

Unbeknown to me at the time, there is no year zero, at least in the most widely used (Gregorian) calendar. At the time I didn't consider or wasn't aware of factors such as the complications arising from teaching things about religious figures in secular high schools, due to the separation of church & state. Hugo Staudinger, The Trustworthiness of the Gospels. Translated by Robin T Hammond (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1983), 104.

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faith while claiming that Jesus was not raised from the dead contradicts historic Christianity.4 And we learn about what Christianity is from the New Testament documents.

If the texts that comprise the Bible are unreliable, Christianity loses its foundation, says University of St. Andrews New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham, because “Christian faith has trusted that within these texts we encounter the real Jesus, and it is hard to see how Christian faith and theology can work with a radically distrusting attitude to the Gospels.”5

Our primary record of the Christian faith is the New Testament; the New Testament texts serve as the foundation for accurate knowledge and belief about Jesus.6 The authors of the New Testament claimed to be writing true accounts of the life of Jesus, and the historical reliability of their writings is important because it protects the Christian faith from modern revisionism.7 Our duty, then, is to investigate whether or not the New Testament documents are in fact accurate, and it is the intent of this analysis to demonstrate why we can be confident that the New Testament is historically reliable, that is, accurately preserved according to the original documents and reliable according to the sort of traditional tests applied to historical documents.8

The question we are seeking to answer is Can we have confidence that the New Testament was accurately recorded and transmitted to us, and that what it contains is the product of early and eyewitness testimony? Was my high school conclusion correct, or is there more to the story? Obviously every issue regarding the historicity of the New Testament cannot be addressed in a work of this size9, but my goal is to summarily review the most pertinent subjects related to New Testament reliability.

4 5 6 7 8 9

See for example Norman Geisler, “The Significance of Christ's Physical Resurrection,” Bibliotheca Sacra 146:582 (1990): 148-170. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 2. Amy Orr-Ewing, Is the Bible Intolerant? Sexist? Oppressive? Homophobic? Outdated? Irrelevant? (Downer's Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 31-32. I’m referring here to the tenancy, when the Bible is dismissed as inaccurate, of interpreting the most central tenants of the faith to cohere with the whims of the times. See for example John DePoe, “The Historical Credibility of the New Testament,” n.p. Cited 6 April 2007. Online: http://apologetics.johndepoe.com/bible.html For example, N. T. Wright's brilliant and comprehensive tome on the issue of the historicity of Jesus' resurrection weighs in at over 700 pages! N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003)

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General Criticisms of the New Testament
Before considering the positive evidence for the reliability of the New Testament, we will first consider four common criticisms which are sometimes used to dismiss the texts out of hand before even investigating the positive evidence for their reliability.

Ancient Documents Can't be Trusted
One common criticism of the New Testament is that its writings are so old that they can't possibly be trusted. This sort of objection comes partially as a result of the sort of “historical relativism” that began in the late 19th and early 20th century. This view of history claims that we cannot really know anything that happened in the (ancient) past, or to put it another way: “Documents from antiquity are sometimes condemned for being ancient.”10

This argument assumes that anything that is from earlier times is inherently inferior to that which is more recent, ie “chronological snobbery”. A question naturally follows: How old is “too old”? At what point do past events become “history”, and therefore become unreliable? Is one hundred years too long? What about fifty years? Sources should be judged on their own merits, not merely or primarily based on how old they are. In addition, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, historical relativist thinking has led to serious practical problems, like potentially opening the door to ridiculous hypotheses such as holocaust denial.11

Although most now reject a totally objective (that is, bias-free) approach to history, that doesn't mean we must accept a relativist view instead. A pragmatic approach, whereby we evaluate all of the available evidence and attempt to come to a conclusion based on its merit, taking into account the possibility of biases in both the authors of the ancient documents and in ourselves, seems like a reasonable method to use instead. As Rodney Stark, a sociologist of religion, explains: “Reality exists and history actually occurs. The historian’s task is to discover as accurately as possible what actually took place.”12

10 Douglas Groothuis, On Jesus (Wadsworth Philosophers Series) (Victoria: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2003), 12. 11 Orr-Ewing, Is the Bible Intolerant? 34-35. Criticism that this commits the “slippery slide” fallacy could be countered by the fact that some people do famously deny the holocaust, such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that such declarations contrary to fact are often rationalized, in part, by claiming we can't really know history, or the “traditional” ways of doing history are “biased” and/or are said to be ineffective. 12 Rodney Stark, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 2.

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The postmodern notion that we cannot know any history because historians are biased is, at best, “an exaggerated skepticism.”13 Each case must be evaluated based on its own merits, as we shall do in the latter part of this analysis.

Even if we were able to demonstrate that there are good reasons for believing that the New Testament text is reliable, some might still object that, even if we know what the texts say, we still wouldn’t know what they mean. The argument goes that the text of the Bible has been variously interpreted, so we can’t really know what they mean. However, such an objection cannot be applied consistently. We do not doubt that the meanings of most documents can be discerned reliably; this objection is raised (conveniently) only in the case of the Bible. There is no doubt that interpreting portions of the biblical text can be at times difficult or ambiguous, but the meaning of the vast majority of the text is not in dispute. The laws of a state may too at times be difficult or ambiguous, but no one suggests that their meaning is entirely up to individual interpretation!

An additional problem with this objection becomes apparent through this fictional dialogue, as imagined by Douglas J. Wilson:

“… when someone hauls out the Bible we can’t be sure that what they say is true. There are too many interpretations to be sure which one is right.” Evangelist answered him, “Suppose we had a room with one hundred copies of this translation of the Bible.” Evangelist held up his worn little black book. “Suppose further that we put one hundred people from various backgrounds into the room with the Bibles. Now how many different interpretations will we get of what they read?” “I think we will get one hundred different interpretations.” “Well, perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so bad, but let’s grant it for the sake of the argument. Now here is the question. Where is the variable? Is it in the Bibles or is it in the men?” “Well, it is in the men.” “So then we should say that men are not to be trusted because they come up with so many interpretations?” “No …” The speaker looked trapped and glanced at his companions for help. It was not

The point of the illustration is to highlight the fact that the text doesn’t change: It has absolute, objective meaning. It is the primary responsibility of the interpreter to determine what the author originally intended to communicate before bringing his or her own interpretations into the equation. Some parts of the Bible are indeed open to differences in interpretation; however, the majority of the text is intended to be clear and absolute, thus any differences in interpretation are indicative of the interpreters, not the text.

Miracles are Impossible
A second objection: The New Testament contains miracle accounts; therefore it must be regarded as historically dubious. The implication is that miracles do not or cannot happen and therefore any text claiming miracles occurred cannot be accurate. David Hume famously objected that the chances of miracles happening are so improbable that any naturalistic explanation (no matter how unlikely) is preferable to a miraculous explanation; Hume describes a miracle as “a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.”15

However, this argument begs the question, and a wise person “should not a priori rule out the possibility of miracles.”16 If God exists then miracles are possible, and (some claim) perhaps even probable.17 Since “if a miracle did literally occur, it did so in the time-space realm,”18 it is appropriate to investigate the historical circumstances of miracle claims.19 (Conversely, if it could be demonstrated with high probability that a legitimate miracle occurred, this would be strong evidence that God exists.) Are legitimate miracles rare? I would say yes; but it only takes one legitimate occurrence of a miracle to demonstrate that they are real.

We are no doubt aware of supposed miracles (ancient and from modern times) that have been proven to be fraudulent. However, these false miracles neither prove that miracles cannot occur, nor do they prove that Jesus' miracles did not occur. Again, it is most appropriate to not dismiss such claims out of hand but to examine them based on their own merit. As leading New Testament scholar Craig A. Evans suggests, we should “let historians be historians. Look at the sources.”20

When compared to other miracle claims in other religions (such as the miracles attributed to Muhammad long after his death) the evidence and arguments for Jesus' resurrection in particular is in “an entirely different category” from other such miracle claims.21 Antony Flew (the eminent former atheist
15 David Hume, “Of Miracles,” as cited in its entirety in chapter one of R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (eds), In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God's Actions in History (Downer's Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 29-44. 16 Phil Fernandes, “Miracles,” n.p. Cited 29 March 2007. Online: http://www.biblicaldefense.org/Writings/miracles.htm 17 W. David Beck in Geivett and Habermas, In Defense of Miracles, 149. 18 Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin: College Press Publishing Company, 1996), 60. 19 For a more in-depth discussion of this topic, see Francis J. Beckwith in Geivett and Gary R. Habermas, In Defense of Miracles, 86-98. 20 Craig A. Evans in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 59. 21 Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel

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professor who recently became a believer in God) even though he is not a Christian and therefore does not believe the resurrection occurred, still nevertheless concedes that “The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity, I think, from the evidence offered for the occurrence of most other supposedly miraculous events.”22

A related objection involving the miraculous claims that the miracle stories are later traditions added by the Gospel writers to help make their story more palatable to first century readers. This objection begs the question (by assuming that miracles are impossible), ignores the fact that miracle traditions would not likely have developed had Jesus never performed any acts which people considered to be miraculous in nature23 (even the later Jewish Talmud suggests that Jesus did perform miraculous feats, though it disputes the source of His power to do so24) and also ignores that there was likely insufficient time (based on the early dating of the New Testament documents and early creeds contained within, as per below) for such legendary development to take place.25

The Telephone Game
A third objection is that the New Testament documents (and early oral traditions) have been passed on so many times over hundreds of years that errors have inevitably crept in and rendered the text corrupt. The example of the “telephone game” illustrates this objection: a message is whispered to the first person in a chain, who whispers it to the person beside them, and so on, until by the end of the game the message the last person hears is nothing like the original (to comedic effect). Shirley McLean, speaking on the Larry King show, famously brushed aside the Bible, saying it had been changed and retranslated so many times that it is impossible to be confident in its accuracy. King agreed, affirming that “Everyone knows that.”26

Early on the Christian message was indeed transmitted orally. Beyond that basic fact, the analogy quickly breaks down. First, we should keep in mind that unlike modern times, the culture in which Jesus lived and preached was primarily an oral culture.27 Most people at that time could not read or write.28 Therefore, having a good memory was an important and necessary skill (see the later section Eyewitness Testimony for more on this point). Having a good memory was especially important for Jewish teachers (although it was of course important for everyone). Early Christian beliefs were publicly preached and taught among large groups of people29 which differentiates the transmission of the New Testament from the telephone game, since in the game the message is passed down linearly and secretly from one person to another. The participants in the game never have the chance to converse with each-other to clarify the message, nor do they have the opportunity to have the message repeated. The message itself being passed along in a game setting is often obscure and lacking in context, whereas the New Testament message would be transmitted in context. Evans agrees with this analysis, commenting: “Unlike the telephone game, this is a community effort … This was a living tradition that the community discussed and was constantly remembered because it was normative, it was precious, they lived by it.”30

disciples, were Jewish and thus would have been aware of the long history and importance of accurately copying Scripture) were also writing down the messages, not whispering them. The Old Testament prophets were instructed to not just hear and recite God's word but to write it down.31

Furthermore, since such high value was placed on community in the early church, there was plenty of opportunity for others to correct mistakes in written manuscripts. The Gospel message was publicly proclaimed among many people including other eyewitnesses who could intervene to correct faulty messages32, including the disciples themselves, some of whom would later pen some of the New Testament documents themselves. (See Eyewitness Testimony below for elaboration of this point.)

Once the text was written down, the transmission of the text was in written form, not verbal, and a trail of manuscripts allows us to refute the theory that corruption occurred during its written transmission.33 (See Manuscript Evidence: A Mountain of Manuscripts below for elaboration of this point.)

Also, it should be made clear that the New Testament, while of course copied and recopied many times, has not gone through a process of multiple translations. The modern English versions that we read today (such as the NIV, NRSV, ESV, etc) have all been translated directly from the original Hebrew and Greek (and occasionally Aramaic) into English by teams of trained and knowledgeable scholars.34 For example, the NIV (the most popular modern translation35) was translated directly from the original languages by a team of over 100 scholars spanning six countries and over 20 different denominations.36

31 Ex. Jeremiah 30:2, Isaiah 30:8, Exodus 34:27; Steven Masood, The Bible and the Qur'an: A Question of Integrity (Atlanta: Authentic Media, 2007 (Originally published by OM Publishing, India, 2001)), 60-62. 32 Ibid. 33 Koukl, “Is the New Testament Text Reliable?,” n.p. 34 Groothuis, On Jesus, 13. 35 “More than 65 percent of the participating leaders named the NIV as their preferred Bible in a survey conducted by the National Association of Evangelicals.” Jennifer Riley, “NIV Bible Tops List by Evangelical Leaders,” in The Christian Post, n.p. Cited 17 May 2008. Online: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080411/31904_NIV_Bible_Tops_List_by_Evangelical_Leaders_.htm 36 International Bible Society, “Background of the New International Version (NIV) Bible,” n.p. Cited 25 September 2007. Online: http://www.ibs.org/niv/background.php

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The Copycat Theory
An objection which has reappeared in recent years (after falling out of scholarly favor for decades) is the “copycat theory”. This theory proposes that the stories found in the New Testament and even the person of Jesus Christ were all based on the myths of first century “mystery religions” and/or other ancient religions. Common sources for parallels include some of the pagan mystery religions such as Mithrism, Egyptian gods like Osiris and Horus, and other religious teachers such as Apollonius of Tyana.37 The claim is that numerous and explicit parallels exist between these works and the New Testament stories regarding Jesus, His resurrection, the disciples, and/or the early church.

The specific claims made regarding each of the persons/deities are far too lengthy and numerous to consider here. Slinging mud is, after all, much quicker and easier than washing it off! Since much more indepth treatments of each individual for whom parallels are claimed are already freely available38, let’s focus on overarching issues related to the copycat theory.

At the outset it should be emphasized that Jesus, the apostles, and many of the earliest Christians were Jewish, and as such would be the least likely of all people to borrow from pagan sources. Paul, for example, was a well-trained orthodox Jew.39 This means that “the earliest Christians shared this *Jewish+ aversion to paganism” and theories that the New Testament authors borrowed from other religions “carries a heavy burden of proof.”40 Another important note is that the amount of specific and detailed information regarding many ancient religions and mystery religious in particular is paltry at best. For example, information on Mithraism is limited to “some graffiti and inscriptions, as well as descriptions of the religion from its opponents,”41 which is to be expected when a religion attempts to keep its doctrines secret from the outside world. However this naturally limits the firmness of any conclusions that we can draw from the small amount of material we have, especially compared to early Christian documents.

We will now, for the sake of discussion, focus on the most central event in the New Testament,

namely Jesus' resurrection, since this event is clearly the focus of both the Gospels and the other writings. The resurrection must be differentiated from a mere resuscitation, such as we find in John 11:1-43 (where Lazarus is raised from the dead) or Acts 20:7-12 (where a young boy is brought back to life). Jesus' followers did not merely claim that He was raised back to His former life, but instead claimed that He was raised renewed and transformed. Others who were raised would die again, but Jesus was raised to eternal life. Not only that, but His resurrection had greater significance than mere resuscitation because (the New Testament authors claimed) it confirmed that those who believed in and put their trust in Jesus would too be raised to eternal life.42

When we look for parallel accounts to Jesus' resurrection in earlier religions, the Egyptian story of Osiris is the only pre-Christian god for whom we find a potential parallel resurrection, and when that account is studied, the major and critical differences between it and Jesus' resurrection become evident.43 For example, Osiris may or may not have been brought back to life on Earth, and was made god of the “underworld”, and Osiris himself is not even the hero of the account, but rather the hero is Isis (or perhaps Horus, their son).44 Osiris is hardly renewed and transformed; his “resurrection” is more akin to a “zombification.”45 The stories themselves are very dissimilar and most central details are different.46

This brings us to the second major point against the copycat hypothesis: The idea that ancient or contemporary mystery religions were sources for the New Testament crumbles when it is divulged that significant parallels only begin to be found in the sources for other religions after 100AD (which, as we'll see later, is after the entire New Testament was written).47 The earliest account of a dying and rising god that at least in part parallels Jesus' resurrection is found over 100 years after the biblical reports of Jesus' resurrection.48

During the first and second century mystery religions were “just starting to become popular,” says history professor and Greco-Roman history expert James S Jeffers, and “were still relatively small, localized

cults.”49 Certainly some of the mystery religions (such as Mithrism) existed before the first century, but the parallels to Christianity begin to appear only much later, after the New Testament documents had been written. This is why we should conclude that the “crucial point here is that if there was any line of influence, it would seem more reasonable to argue that it was from Christianity to the mystery religions rather than the other way around.”50 In short, the timing is all wrong for “copycat” theories to work.

Furthermore, often supposed parallels will be cited carelessly and those who claim parallels have “inexcusably disregarded the dates and the provenience of their sources when they have attempted to provide prototypes for Christianity.”51 For example, the earliest account of the life of Apollonius of Tyana was written nearly 200 years after Jesus, and is seen by many as the product of a conscious reaction against Christian beliefs.52 Ronald H. Nash comments, in particular to the commonly cited mystery religions:

It is not until we come to the third century A.D. that we find sufficient source material (i.e., information about the mystery religions from the writings of the time) to permit a relatively complete reconstruction of their content. ... Information about a cult that comes several hundred years after the close of the New Testament canon must not be read back into what is presumed to be the status of the cult during the first century A.D. The crucial question is not what possible influence the mysteries may have had on segments of Christendom after A.D. 400, but what effect the emerging mysteries may have had on the New Testament in the first century.53 Even if we were to grant purely for the sake of argument that numerous and explicit parallels exist between religious doctrines that pre-existed Christianity and the New Testament (which they do not), that would not necessarily lead us to conclude that copying occurred. To do so would be fallacious reasoning, “post hoc, ergo propter hoc”, that is, the assumption of causation due merely to succession in time.54 To demonstrate why this won't work, if we were to compare the life of Alexander the Great (whom no historian doubts actually lived) with Achilles (the fictional central character of Homer’s Iliad) we would find
49 James S. Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 96. 50 Eddy and Boyd, The Jesus Legend, 141. 51 Yamauchi, “Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?,” n.p. 52 Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 91. 53 Ronald H. Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced By Pagan Religions?,” n.p. Cited 18 September 2007. Online: http://www.inplainsite.org/html/new_testament_and_paganism.html (Originally published by the Christian Research Journal, 1994.) 54 J. P. Holding, “Some notes on alleged parallels between Christianity and pagan religions,” n.p. Cited 17 September 2007. Online: http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/pagint.html

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many parallels, but no one would suggest that Alexander the Great was a fictional character compiled piecemeal from the Iliad.55

Numerous and explicit parallels to Christianity do not exist, and most claimed similarities are not real parallels, even if they were found to exist pre-Christianity. For example:

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Many supposed parallels exhibit equivocation of terms or exaggeration of claims to make certain practices seem synonymous with earlier Christian practices.56 For example, the Mithraic rite of “taurobolium”, where the initiate would stand in a pit and be bathed in the blood of an animal that was slaughtered standing on a platform above them, is not comparable in any way to the Christian sacrament of baptism, as is sometimes claimed.57

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Attempted comparisons between the death & “resurrections” of gods in the mystery religions have also been exaggerated, as has the presence of notions of divine redemption.58

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Still others compare much later adopted Christian beliefs which are not found in the Bible with the beliefs of other religions. Such later Christian beliefs have no bearing on the reliability of the New Testament. For example, celebration of Christmas on December 25th is a 4th century idea that has no biblical basis, so it is irrelevant to make comparisons based on this date.59

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Some parallels are expected to be found in common between any two religions because certain features or motifs are intrinsic to religions by their very nature. For example, such common elements as there being a wise teacher, disciples, traveling, preaching, various acts of God, visions or spiritual experiences, citing holy texts, and dying a martyr's death.60

Although it is common to see lists of supposed parallels of Jesus and other religious figures (ostensibly because such lists seem impressive upon first glance) most of the supposed parallels listed turn out to be superfluous, unimportant or even entirely made-up (or at least totally unverifiable) upon further study.

55 Christopher Price, “Is Alexander the Great a Fictitious Character Based on Achilles?,” n.p. Cited 4 October 2007. Online: http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-alexander-great-fictitious-character.html 56 Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 126. 57 Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 153. 58 Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World, 99. 59 Porter and Bedard, Unmasking the Pagan Christ, 98. 60 Mormonism (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) for example contains all of these elements, but no one would argue that it merely borrowed these from other religions.

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Before concluding this topic, a brief note should be made regarding Kersey Graves' 1875 book The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors which is sometimes unfortunately cited as a source for alleged parallels, even though it has been decisively dismissed by modern scholarship. Richard Carrier (an atheist historian and opponent of Christianity) describes Graves' work as “useless to historians as a source”, and concludes that Graves was “oblivious to the distinction between the origins of Christianity and its subsequent development.”61 He also lists ten ways that Graves demonstrates poor scholarship. Sadly Graves' list and derivatives of it are sometimes still being used today.62 As James S. Jeffers notes in his book on GrecoRoman society, “the figures at the center of these [pagan] cults were mythological, not historical persons”63; that is, the members of these mystery religions themselves did not believe or claim that those they worshiped actually lived and existed in history, contrary to the person of Jesus Christ, who, except for a small handful of ardent skeptics, is universally agreed by scholars to be a real historical person.64

Evidence for the Historical Reliability of the New Testament
When evaluating historical documents, there are several questions that we might ask in order to help determine how likely they are to be accurate reports of history:

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How long after the events were these documents written? The closer we can trace the documents to the events that they describe (and therefore the shorter the gap) the more likely they are to accurately depict what happened.

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Who wrote the documents? Were they eyewitnesses to the events? The writings will have more credibility if eyewitnesses to the events wrote them and/or were consulted.

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How many copies of the documents exist? If we posses only a few copies of an ancient document, we cannot be very confident that we know what the original said, whereas if we have a large number of documents we can compare them to verify their contents have been transmitted accurately and establish with much greater certainty what the original author(s) wrote.

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Do external sources exist, and if so, do they confirm what our primary sources tell us? Although not always available, multiple attestation of historical events is preferred. What do we find when we compare the documents in question to other sources from the same time period?

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Are the documents internally consistent? Do the documents demonstrate consistency within themselves, and do they include literary or cultural anachronisms? In addition to these questions, there are many other factors to consider65, but for the discussion

below these will be the main areas of inquiry as we examine the New Testament texts to determine whether or not we have good reason to believe they are reliable.

Did the New Testament authors even intend to write accurate history? In the prologue the Gospel of Luke we read the following:
65 For example, Mark D. Roberts examines these in addition to other questions in Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 24ff, although many of these questions are addressed in whole or in part within this short analysis.

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Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4) Luke clearly intends for his work to be taken seriously as an accurate account. He mentions careful investigation “from the beginning” of relevant sources, eyewitnesses (the Greek word here refers to firsthand observers of events66), and writing an “orderly account” so that his readers would know the “certainty” of what they were taught, ie, that they may have confidence that what they believe is actually true.67 Luke's prologue indicates that he, at least, intends to be writing accurate history.68 Similarly, Paul in his letters plainly differentiates between transmissions from Jesus Himself and Paul's own opinions.69

Let us now examine the biblical text to attempt to answer the questions above, and determine whether Luke's claim to be accurately preserving a historical account is justified.

66 67 68 69

Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 117. Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 65. Blomberg in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 40-41; Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 64-65. Ex. 1 Corinthians 7:10-16, 9:14. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 268.

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Short Time-Frame
Although we do not know precisely when the New Testament books were written, the available evidence allows us to come to educated conclusions. For some books we can ascertain fairly exact dating, for others we are limited to more general ranges of possible dates. Of the New Testament documents, the letters of Paul can be most confidently dated. Few scholars dispute dating Paul's first letter (1 Thessalonians) to 48-50AD, and the remainder of Paul's letters were composed between that date and his death, at latest 68AD.70 This means that all of Paul's letters were composed within 40 years of Jesus' death, the earliest being composed as little as 18 years after the crucifixion.71

However, there is material in Paul's letters which is even older. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, Paul restates what he previously “received” regarding Jesus' death and resurrection, including Jesus' burial, resurrection, and appearances to many specifically named people and groups. There are several reasons to conclude that this passage is actually an early Christian creed which Paul has incorporated into his letter. First, the words “received” and “delivered” Paul uses “are technical Rabbinic terms which indicate Paul is passing on Holy tradition.”72 These terms were used to refer to reiterating tradition, and were used in that way in other ancient sources.73 Next, some of the words used in this passage are not words Paul uses elsewhere in his letters.74 The passage is also written in a parallel, highly metered form, indicating it likely was originally oral in nature.75

Furthermore, there are indications this portion of Paul's letter, when it was written down, was originally written in Aramaic, indicating an earlier non-Greek source.76 And Paul himself implies that the teaching was a summary of all the apostles preached (1 Cor 15:11).77 All of these reasons indicate this was a very early creed that Paul incorporated into his letter.78 Paul also notes that he verified the information he received to make sure it was accurate (Galatians 2:1-10).
70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 37. Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 41. Gary Habermas in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 228. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 264-265. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 153-154. Ibid. Ibid. William Lane Craig, The Son Rises: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1981), 47. 78 Regarding Robert Price's suggestion that this passage is a later interpolation (a view not shared by other New Testament scholars), see for example Christopher Price (no relation), “Is 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 an Interpolation?,” n.p. Cited 1 October 2007. Online: http://christiancadre.org/member_contrib/cp_interpolation.html

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Paul must have received this creed several years earlier since in his letter he is reminding the church in Corinth of what he previously told them. It is probable that Paul received it between five and seven years after Jesus' crucifixion, during Paul's time in Galatia79, though he may have received it even earlier.80 Additionally, if this is when Paul received the creed, the creed itself must be even earlier than that! (There are also other passages that are likely creeds or hymns which provide a wealth of early details about Jesus' life and ministry.81)

This early testimony comes extremely close to the events it describes, and is unprecedented in ancient history, as evidenced further below. Recent research indicates that Jesus was worshiped as God by the earliest Christians, perhaps within days after Jesus' crucifixion.82 This indicates that the belief that Jesus rose from the dead was held by the earliest Christians, as expressed in the creed quoted by Paul. Although it is sometimes challenged that Paul tells us little about the historical Jesus, in fact the Pauline texts (which were largely written to those who already knew the stories about Jesus and therefore there would be no reason for Paul to repeat such stories) tell us a wealth of details about Jesus' life, including that Jesus was descended from David, was the Messiah, ministered primarily in Israel, had a brother named James, instituted communion, was betrayed, died, buried, raised, and taken up into heaven, among other details.83

The dating of the Gospels and non-Pauline documents is less certain, but it is still possible to date essentially the entirety of the New Testament within the first century AD based, in part, on the letters of the New Testament fathers. Based on quotations of the scriptures found in letters written by Clement (95AD84-96AD), Ignatius (108AD) and Polycarp (110AD) we have confirmation of all of the New Testament documents except 2 John and Jude.85 Of course the fact that these two books were not quoted doesn't prove that they were not written in the first century, only that these early authors did not quote from them explicitly.

Further evidence, in this case evidence of omission, can be deduced which may lead us to conclude
79 80 81 82 Habermas in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 230. Craig, The Son Rises, 48. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 144-152. Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 4. 83 Peter M. Head, Is the New Testament Reliable? (Cambridge: Grove Books Limited, 2003), 19. 84 Orr-Ewing, Is the Bible Intolerant?, 42; 95AD is listed for Clement in Orr-Ewing, all other dates in this list are from Barnett. 85 Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 39-41.

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that many (or perhaps even all) of the New Testament was written before the year 70AD. Before exploring this line of reasoning, consider the following:

Imagine a history student is given this assignment: Write the history of New York City's famous World Trade Center. The student submits a paper which describes the seven buildings comprising a hub of finance and world trade, including the twin towers, each of which contain 110 stories. Their paper notes the over 50,000 people that work there, and that the World Trade Center is so huge (around 10 million square feet of office space) that it warrants its own zip code. Then the paper ends.86 What would a reader of this document conclude about when it was written? Obviously the reader would conclude it was written before September 11, 2001. If it had been written after that date, it surely would mention the twin towers' destruction when two hijacked planes were smashed into them. This was such a monumental event that it would be inconceivable that it would not be mentioned in any significant writings about the WTC written after the tragic events of 9-11. In much the same way, the fact that nowhere in the New Testament do we find mention of the destruction of the Jewish temple (which was at the time the central place of worship for the Jewish people) and the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70AD leads us to believe that the texts were written before that event occurred.87

Since none of the New Testament documents mention the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70AD, when we consider the massive importance of that event and that it is (vaguely but unmistakably) predicted in prophecy (ex. Matthew 24:1-2, Mark 13:1-2, Luke 21:5-6,20-24,32), this would indicate that they were likely written before the event occurred.88 This is certainly a curious omission, which when combined with Luke's sudden ending of his book of Acts with Paul awaiting trial (which would have been, at latest, 68AD) and other internal factors89, has led some scholars to conclude that the majority of the New Testament was composed before the year 70AD.90

86 Example & much of the following discussion was adapted from J. P. Moreland and Tim Muehlhoff, The God Conversation (Downer's Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 96. 87 Randall Price, Searching for the Original Bible (Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2007), 115. (See also following citations.) 88 If these predictions were actually later interpolations into the text, we would expect that they would have been made more explicit. 89 Such as the omissions of the martyrdoms of James and Peter in addition to Paul; Masood, The Bible and the Qur'an, 58. 90 Orr-Ewing, Is the Bible Intolerant?, 42-43.

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Even if for the sake of argument we grant a date of 100AD to the latest of the New Testament documents, this means the entire New Testament was composed less than 70 years after Jesus' death. Compared with writings about other historical figures of around the same time, the superiority of the New Testament manuscripts becomes clear: a “treasure trove from any historian’s point of view.”91 For example, the biographies of Alexander the Great were composed over 400 years after his death, but they are still considered generally reliable.92 By comparison to other ancient writings, the New Testament “is like a news flash”!93 This situation is “encouraging, from a historian's point of view” because we now know that at very least the first three Gospels and many of the other New Testament writings “were written at a time when many were alive who could remember the things that Jesus said and did”.94

91 92 93 94

Evans in Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 56. Blomberg in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 33. Blomberg in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 34. F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Sixth Edition (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981), 7.

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Eyewitness Testimony
Everyone recognizes the limitations of eyewitness testimony, but it is still powerful evidence that was highly valued in the ancient world and is still valued today. One obvious requirement for accurate eyewitness testimony is that the eyewitnesses must be able to remember things; they must have good memories. In the first century communication was primarily oral, so people were forced to develop strong memory skills.95 Especially among Jewish culture, “virtually all knowledge was learned in the form of sayings and texts which were imprinted on the memory, so that one knew them by heart.”96 Some first century Rabbis memorized entire books of the Old Testament.97 This lends credibility to the idea that the eyewitness accounts would still be reliable even many years after the events themselves took place.98 Even today amazing feats of memory are still possible99, especially when the circumstances are ripe for strong memory retention, as they were for the New Testament authors.100

Jesus' teaching style was similar to that used by other Jewish Rabbis (teachers) in the first century , which often included techniques like pointed formulations, alliteration, rhythmic phrases, repetition, and so on. We also know that it was Jewish custom to carefully memorize Rabbis' teachings. 102 Since the apostles and many of Jesus' early followers were Jews, it is safe to assert they would have done likewise. Students of Rabbis observed their masters closely, not just their teachings but also in their actions, and were careful to remember both word and deed so that they could put them into practice and carry on their master's tradition.103 This makes the testimony of the early followers of Jesus especially valuable regarding what they have to tell us about His life, acts, and teachings.
101

The New Testament authors explicitly claim to be eyewitnesses to Jesus' ministry. For example, in 2
95 Blomberg in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 43. 96 Birger Gerhardsson, The Origins of the Gospel Traditions. Translated by Gene J. Lund (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), 19. 97 Craig L. Blomberg, “The Historical Reliability of the Gospels,” n.p. Cited 15 March 2007. Online: http://www.4truth.net/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=hiKXLbPNLrF&b=784441&ct=981289 98 Darrell L. Bock in Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (eds), Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 79-81. 99 I once observed a live performance where a man dramatically recited the entire book of Luke from memory. 100 Bauckham lists several factors that would have contributed to strong memory retention among the witnesses, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 341-346. 101 J. P. Moreland, “The Historicity of the New Testament,” n.p. Cited 16 September 2007. Online: http://www.apologetics.org/books/historicity.html#C (Excerpted from J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987)) 102 John Warwick Montgomery, History, Law and Christianity (Edmonton: Canadian Institute for Law, Theology & Public Policy Inc, 2002), 34; see for example Deuteronomy 6:6-7. 103 Gerhardsson, The Origins of the Gospel Traditions, 17-18.

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Peter 1:16 the author proclaims that “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”104 Similarly, 1 John 1:1,3 states that “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched ... we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.”

This does not prove that they actually were eyewitnesses, only that they claimed it. We should be willing to investigate whether they were or not. The importance of such investigation is evident when we note how highly regarded eyewitness testimony is in the New Testament itself. In Luke's prologue (Luke 1:1-4) he makes note of the importance of speaking with eyewitnesses, and Peter's insistence on replacing Judas Iscariot with someone who had personally observed what had occurred (Acts 1:21-22) demonstrate that firsthand eyewitnesses were highly regarded.105

We should begin by noting that ancient historians did not value recording the exact words spoken by an individual as highly as we value it today. Instead, ancient historians attempted to communicate a speaker’s intended meaning.106 Therefore, while different authors may record a speaker's words slightly differently, their testimonies are often still reliable.107 Additionally, if the stories in the Gospel were all related in exactly the same way, we might suspect collusion between the authors, because “if the Gospels were too consistent, that itself would invalidate them as independent witnesses.”108 The New Testament books relate the same events but in sometimes different ways, suggesting that they present common history from independent eyewitness perspectives. Although the Gospels may have different emphases109, they still present the same message. Even John's Gospel (which differs the most from the “synoptics”, ie Matthew, Mark & Luke, especially in terms of style) has a plethora of details in common with the other Gospels.110 The question remains, is the New Testament based on eyewitness testimony?

The evidence is strong that a large part of the New Testament is based upon eyewitness testimony.

104 The authors also claim they are telling the truth and not lying, ex Romans 9:1, though of course this does not prove that they were telling the truth, only that they claimed to be, and that they differentiated truth from error. 105 Staudinger, The Trustworthiness of the Gospels, 26. 106 Bock in Wilkins and Moreland (eds), Jesus Under Fire, 79. 107 Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 86-88. 108 Blomberg in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 47; see also Montgomery, History, Law and Christianity, 79-80. 109 For example, Matthew seems to have been written for a primarily Jewish audience, whereas Luke's Gospel was almost certainly intended, primarily, for gentile readers. 110 Mark D. Roberts lists 33 points of agreement as “some” of the places where all four Gospels agree on details of Jesus' life, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 98-100.

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Mark's Gospel, for example, includes many indicators that it is based on the testimony of the eyewitness Peter, and perhaps also of Mark himself and others. Mark's Gospel places more emphasis on Peter than any other Gospel111, such as when Mark mentions that Jesus speaks to Peter twice in Gethsemane112, whereas the other Gospels are less specific113. Mark also mentions Peter more times per page than any other Gospel writer114, and uses the technique of inclusio (a literary “framing” device) at the beginning and end of his Gospel, which likely indicates that Peter is the source of the Gospel's material.115 John Warwick Montgomery notes that there are scenes in Mark's Gospel where the third person plural perspective switches to third person singular involving Peter, which is the indirect equivalent of a first person discourse of Peter himself.116

Furthermore, Richard Bauckham suggests that the unnamed persons in Mark's gospel are not named due to “protective anonymity” because they had run afoul of the authorities who were persecuting the early church, and, being still alive at the time of the writing, would thus need to be protected.117 If this is the case, not only does this mean the writing is based on eyewitness accounts, it also confirms that Mark's gospel (or at least his sources) were written early in the church's history.

Although Mark's Gospel is in a sense “unnamed” in the sense that the text of the Gospel does not include the title “The Gospel According to Mark” as we find in modern translations, there is in fact no ancient competition for its authorship, which we might expect to find if the authorship was attributed later. As more and more copies were made of the document, and as it spread far and wide geographically, it would quickly become impossible to universally attribute an author to it at a later date. We would also expect that if its authorship was fabricated by the early church that a more prominent figure would have been chosen, not the relatively unknown “John Mark”.118

External testimony from Papias in the late first or early second century (as quoted by Eusebius) also confirms Mark as author of the Gospel and Mark's use of Peter as a source, which, although a later
111 J. P. Holding, “The New Testament: Mark. Profiles of Key Issues Concerning the Four Gospels,” n.p. Cited 13 March 2007. Online: http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/markdef.html#pete 112 Mark 14:32-42; Matthew 26:36-46; Luke 22:40-46 113 Matthew mentions Peter only once in the Gethsemane passage, and Luke does not specifically mention him. 114 Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 125, 148-149, 155. 115 Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 125-127, 204. Bauckham argues that Luke and John adopt Mark's inclusio technique, giving supplemental support to Mark's implicit claims. 116 Montgomery, History, Law and Christianity, 29. 117 Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 184-187. (Here Bauckham follows & expands Gerd Theissen's argument in his book The Gospels in Context (tr. L. M. Maloney; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), chapter 4.) 118 Blomberg in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 23.

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affirmation, is still considered valuable by modern scholars.119 Also, the Muratorian Canon (dated to between 140-170AD) lists Luke and John explicitly as Gospel authors, and likely included Mark and Matthew as well120, although unfortunately that portion has been lost in the fragmentary surviving copy.121 If the author of the Muratorian Canon did include Mark's Gospel as the second on his list, he or she is also making the claim (due to how the text is worded) that Mark himself is an eyewitness.

An interesting yet somewhat puzzling detail in Mark's Gospel is recorded in Mark 14:51-52, during the author's account of Jesus' arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane: “A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.” This seemingly inconsequential detail does not appear in any of the other Gospels. Why did Mark choose to include it? Possibly the author himself was the “young man ... following Jesus” (the young man was not one of the apostles) and therefore chose to include an incident in his Gospel that involved himself.122 This theory is inconclusive but an intriguing possibility, and is an example of one of many “anonymous witnesses” in the Gospels, many of whom are likely eyewitness sources.123

Persuasive cases can also be made that the other gospels and letters of the New Testament are based on eyewitness testimony, such as, for example, the book of Acts (the continuation to the Gospel attributed to Luke which describes the history of the early church) which was in part based on Luke being a traveling companion of Paul.124 Certain similarities of phrasing and terminology in Paul and Luke's writings back up this assertion.125 Taken together, this evidence (as well as other lines of evidence126) strongly suggests that Mark's Gospel is based on eyewitness testimony (namely that of Peter, a direct eyewitness to Jesus' ministry, and others) and also that many other sections of the New Testament are based on eyewitness testimony.
119 Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 203ff. 120 The author of the Muratorian Canon clearly accepts four Gospels, with Luke and John being the latter two, but the names of the first two the author recorded are unfortunately lost. For its text, see Bruce M. Metzger (trans), “The Muratorian Fragment,” n.p. Cited 25 September 2007. Online: http://www.bible-researcher.com/muratorian.html 121 Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 42. 122 “Many scholars believe the young man ... was none other than Mark himself.” Phillip Yancey and Tim Stafford (eds), The Student Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 1046. 123 The suggestion that the young man lived nearby, was roused from sleep, and came near after hearing the commotion caused by Jesus' arrest ignores the fact that the young man was “following Jesus”, (and that the guards would not likely have tried to arrest him had he not been a follower of Jesus) so it seems to me to be an unlikely hypothesis. Further discussion in Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 197-201. 124 C. J. Hemer, “Luke the Historian,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 60 (1977): 46-51. 125 Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 267. 126 Bauckham gives other indirect evidence, such as curious wording in the so-called Gospel of Thomas “Saying 13” that may indicate Peter as a source for Mark. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 236-238.

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Manuscript Evidence: A Mountain of Manuscripts
We currently possess approximately 5,686 early Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, including some full books, and others in more fragmentary form.127 Of those, approximately eighty-eight are Papyri manuscripts.128 Some of the Greek manuscripts were originally written on scrolls, while others were originally included in codices.129 This count does not even include the thousands of manuscripts written in Latin, Slavic, and many other languages.130 When compared to the number of existing manuscripts of other historical ancient writings, such as those by Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Caesar, Tacitus, and others, the New Testament dwarfs them in comparison; some of these other ancient writings exist in less than a dozen copies.131 Indeed, “the quantity of New Testament material is almost embarrassing in comparison with other works of antiquity.”132

A secondary source of textual information is found the citations of the early church writers. These include sermons, commentaries, and personal letters of the leaders of the church, which can often be dated quite definitively. These are useful to confirm the text of the New Testament since the writers cite the New Testament text frequently and also “sometimes a church *leader+ wrote concerning a disputed reading in a text and thus provides valuable information about the variants as they existed in the texts of his time.”133 It is estimated that there are approximately one million such citations, and that even if all of the thousands of the copies of the New Testament were lost, almost the entire text would be able to be reconstructed from piecing together the quotations in the early church writers.134

It should also be noted that not only are there a copious number of extant manuscripts in existence, they are also geographically distributed quite widely, meaning that we find relatively early manuscripts spread over a wide geographic area. Various “families” of documents can be identified and can act as controls on any variants that might be found among a minority of the others. When the geographic distribution of the New Testament documents is considered, the New Testament “has far and away better
127 128 129 130 131 Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 532. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, 533. A “codex” is the ancient equivalent of a modern book which began to become popular in the late first century. DePoe, “The Historical Credibility of the New Testament,” n.p. Norman L. Geisler, “Can We Know the Bible is the Word of God?,” in Dean C. Halverson (ed), The Compact Guide to World Religions (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1996), 259. 132 Bruce M. Metzger in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 60. 133 Price, The Search for the Original Bible, 83. 134 Ibid, 111-112.

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attestation than any other ancient work.”135

The multiplicity of manuscripts also demonstrates that the number and nature of copying errors that exist between the manuscripts are relatively minor and result in no doctrinal problems.136 The errors that do occur consist predominantly of spelling errors, word order (the order of the words in the sentence is unimportant in the Greek text, ie it does not change the meaning of the sentence like it would in English137), and other similar mistakes.138 Due to decades of careful study through the process of textual criticism139, scholars are led to conclude that “the variations, when they occur, tend to be minor rather than substantive.”140 There is in fact no Christian doctrine that is challenged by the minor variations we find in the manuscripts.141

What then are we to make of the often quoted statement from Bart Ehrman's book Misquoting Jesus: “There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.” 142 Elsewhere in his book, Ehrman claims that there are 200,000-400,000 variations among the extant ancient New Testament manuscripts.143 First we should note that Ehrman is technically correct. When every scribal mistake in the thousands of manuscripts we have of the New Testament (no matter how minor and recounting the same mistake each time it's made in different documents144) is counted, we do find a large number. However, when we actually look at the variations found, “the great majority of these variants are inconsequential—involving spelling differences that cannot even be translated, articles with proper nouns, word order changes.”145 It is estimated that about 75% of the errors are spelling and word order type errors, about 24% are minor variations which do not leave us uncertain about the meaning of the passage, and only the remaining 1% lead to some uncertainty about the meaning.146

135 Eddy and Boyd, The Jesus Legend, 384. 136 Geisler, “Can We Know the Bible is the Word of God?,” in Halverson (ed), The Compact Guide, 260. 137 “It makes a whale of a difference in English if you say, 'Dog bites man' or 'Man bites dog' – sequence matters in English. But in Greek it doesn't.” Metzger in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 64. 138 Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 34. 139 For a brief overview and explanation of the process of textual criticism, see Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 25-37. 140 Strobel, The Case for Christ, 65. 141 Metzger in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 65. 142 Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: HarperSanFranciso, 2005), 90. 143 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 89. 144 Metzger in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 65. 145 Daniel B. Wallace, “The Gospel According to Bart,” n.p. Cited 21 September 2007. Online: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=4000 146 Price, Searching for the Original Bible, 116, 217-219.

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Ehrman himself states elsewhere in his book: To be sure, of all of the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial and of no real importance for anything other than showing that the scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us.147 (Emphasis mine) Furthermore, the only reason why we are able to identify a large number of variants is that we have so many manuscripts to study. If we had fewer manuscripts, we would have less variations (for example, if there were only one surviving copy, there'd be no possibility of variations!) however we would actually be less sure of what the original actually said, because the process of textual criticism cannot operate efficiently with a paucity of documents to work from.148 The process of textual criticism (which has been shown to be highly reliable, with agreement among scholars of many different backgrounds149) has demonstrated that “of the approximately 138,000 words in the New Testament only about 1,400 remain in doubt. The text of the New Testament is thus about 99.9% established.”150 The variations found in the New Testament text become minimal when properly examined.

External Evidence: Writing Outside the New Testament
Before detailing some of the external evidence for the New Testament, an important point regarding the New Testament itself should be noted. The NT consists of 27 individual literary works, many of which were originally composed as letters. These 27 writings were composed by several different authors, at varying times, in diverse locations, under varying circumstances, often for very specific audiences. As Dr Paul Barnett explains:

[T]he New Testament writers were not in league with each other at the point of writing. Nothing Mark wrote indicates any verbal influence by Paul, or vice versa. John did not depend on Paul nor, many scholars believe, upon Mark. While Luke and Matthew have used Mark, their Gospels appear to have been written independently of each other and of John. While James, Hebrews and 1 Peter hold some ideas in common with Paul, none of them appears to have been influenced by, or to be dependent upon, the other.151 This means that the New Testament should not be understood as a single source, but rather as comprising multiple independent sources collected in one volume.152 Some of the New Testament authors were even skeptics before they became convinced of the truth of the Christian message themselves, namely Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of Christians) and James (brother of Jesus, who was not a believer until after Jesus' death & resurrection).153 Therefore, even if there were no available sources outside the New Testament we would still possess several sources, not a single source, some of which come from men formerly hostile to Christian belief. This is more than we possess for other incidents of history which are generally accepted as factual. However, in addition, there are also several corroborating sources outside of the New Testament.

Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian, in his Annals of Imperial Rome (15.44.2-5), confirms several biblical details, including that Jesus' lived when Pilate was governor and Tiberius was emperor, and that Jesus was executed as a criminal.154 He also confirms the early existence of Christian groups, that the movement began in Jerusalem, and that an “immense multitude” had become convinced of the Christian

151 Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 36. 152 W. R. Miller, “The Truthfulness of the Eyewitness Accounts as Presented in the Bible,” n.p. Cited 21 September 2007. Online: http://www.tektonics.org/guest/truthfulness.html 153 Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 64-69. 154 Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 25-26.

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message. Tacitus' writing does not seem to be derived from Christian sources155, and he may have derived his information in part from official Roman records.156

Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, confirms several of the central figures in the New Testament, such as John the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus, and Jesus himself157, as well as others minor figures like Augustus, Tiberius, Pilate, Annas, and Caiaphas.158 One of Josephus' references to Jesus, found in Josephus' Antiquities xx.9.1, concerns James, “the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ”. This reference confirms, at least, that Jesus existed, had a brother who was martyred for his faith, and that some called Jesus “the Christ”. This passage is generally undisputed159, and most conclude that “the authenticity of the text may be taken as certain”160 because the reference is minimal and shows no signs of interpolation (among other reasons).161 A second reference is found in Antiquities xviii.3.3 and is known as the Testimonium Flavianum. It verifies many details about Jesus' life and acts (such as his “surprising feats”, teaching, encounter with Pilate, condemnation, appearances, etc), but, unlike the first passage, the validity of this second passage is partially in dispute. Most scholars conclude that the majority of the Testimonium Flavianum is original and accurate162, with three interpolations163, although a minority argue that the entire passage is a later interpolation, while yet another minority argue that the entire passage is legitimate.164 There are several other early extra-biblical references, including Pliny the Younger165, Suetonius166, Mara bar Serapion167, Jewish Rabbinic tradition in the Talmud (where Jesus' miracles are not denied, but it is claimed that Jesus performed them by means of sorcery!)168, and early (pre 80AD) Christian inscriptions in

155 Bruce, The New Testament Documents, 121. 156 Porter and Bedard, Unmasking the Pagan Christ, 135. 157 Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 83. 158 Bruce, The New Testament Documents, 106. 159 Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, 83; Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 31; cf Bruce, The New Testament Documents, 111. 160 Theissen and Merz, The Historical Jesus, 65. 161 Porter and Bedard, Unmasking the Pagan Christ, 140. 162 Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downer's Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1987) 200-201. 163 Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, 88-104; Theissen and Merz, The Historical Jesus, 71-74. 164 F. F. Bruce wonders if the positive references to Jesus were written by Josephus and intended as sarcasm, “toungein-cheek”. Bruce, The New Testament Documents, 112-113. 165 Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, 23-29; Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 22-24; Bruce, The New Testament Documents, 122-123. 166 Van Voorst argues persuasively that the reference to “Chrestus” does indeed refer to Jesus, Jesus Outside the New Testament, 23-29; as does Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 191; see also Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 28-29; Bruce, The New Testament Documents, 122. 167 Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, 53-58; Van Voorst concludes that Jesus is without a doubt the one referred to as “wise king” in Suetonius, as do Theissen and Merz, The Historical Jesus, 76-79. 168 Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 202-205; Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament, 104-122.

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Pompeii169, as well as the extra-biblical Christian writings of the church fathers. Another potential source (which was likely written in the first century) which has unfortunately been lost is the writing of Thallus, which is still partially preserved (secondhand) in the writings of Julius Africanus.170

Some may wonder why we do not find more frequent mention of Jesus in extra-biblical sources. First, it's worth noting a second time that the New Testament itself contains several independent sources. Second, we should be aware that most historians of the first century were interested primarily in political matters, and although Jesus was condemned by the Roman government, His movement was not primarily political.171 The usual intended readership of early history were Roman leaders, who would not likely be interested in reading about a Jewish prophet and especially not material that would be in any way laudatory of Him, his teaching, or his deeds.172 Therefore we would not expect lengthy treatment of Jesus by non-Christian historians, and, due to the usual emphases of ancient historians, “it is remarkable that Jesus gets mentioned at all.”173 Even so, Jesus was still mentioned by two of the three most important historians of Rome (Tacitus and Seutonius, but not Dio Cassius), the most important Jewish historian (Josephus) and several other sources as described above.174

Additionally, there is actually less evidence for certain historical figures whose existence is not doubted (for example Rabbi Hillel, or Simon bar Kochba) than there is for Jesus, so if those figures are accepted as historical, Jesus must also be accepted as a real historical person.175 Finally, archaeological findings (as previously noted) provide confirmatory evidence that the New Testament documents are accurate at points where it can be objectively tested, leading scholars to conclude that “Archaeology has not produced anything that is unequivocally a contradiction to the Bible ... there have been many opinions of skeptical scholars that have become codified into ‘fact’ over the years but that archaeology has shown to be wrong.”176 Archaeology has actually confirmed certain biblical people and places that were, for a time, in dispute (see Internal Evidence below).

Even if we find certain details in less than total agreement between the New Testament text and

169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176

Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 24-25. Theissen and Merz, The Historical Jesus, 84-85; Porter and Bedard, Unmasking the Pagan Christ, 131-132. Edwin A. Yamauchi in Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, 81. Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 27. Blomberg, “The Historical Reliability of the Gospels,” n.p. Porter and Bedard, Unmasking the Pagan Christ, 130. Theissen and Merz, The Historical Jesus, 93. John McRay in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 100.

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other ancient documents, there is no reason to automatically accept the other source rather than the New Testament. When we find that Luke records an event where 4,000 men follow an Egyptian bandit into the desert, and Josephus records the same event but claims 30,000 men went out, then we would likely be more willing to conclude (on this point, at least) that Luke's more sober account is likely correct.177

177 Hemer, “Luke the Historian,” 50.

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Internal Evidence
A historical source such as the New Testament should inspire confidence “if, at points where it can be checked, the writer proves trustworthy.”178 The historical details that we are able to test through archeology and other ancient writings testify to the accuracy of the New Testament. For example, Luke's specific use of the Greek word “politarche” (used only once in Luke-Acts, and only where it was verifiably appropriate to do so179) is an example of the care he took when choosing his words. Even certain recorded facts that have been doubted by historians have been proven correct based on later archaeological findings, such as John's mention of such locations as the Pool of Bethesda and the Pool of Siloam180, the identification of a location that matches the one where Jesus performed one of His miracles181, and even possibly the placard posted above Jesus at His crucifixion!182

Numerous other internal features of the New Testament also subtly suggest its authenticity, such as the authors' choice to include “hard sayings”183, both of Jesus Himself (ex. Mark 6:5) and regarding the actions of certain disciples (ex. Peter, in Mark 14:66-72).184 These sayings caused tension for the early church (and some continue to do so today) which makes them unlikely to have been fabricated. If the New Testament documents were subject to later redaction we would not expect to find stories included that portray the early leaders of the church in such a negative light.

It is actually astounding that the Bible is so harmonious even though its texts were written, as previously noted, under such diverse conditions. Norman L. Geisler lists some of the conditions under which the Bible (including the Old and New Testaments) was written185:



Written over the time-span of approximately 1,500 years (1400BC – 100AD; at most 70 years for the New Testament)186

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Penned by 40 different authors. (9 for the New Testament)

178 Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 168. 179 Mark D. Roberts, “Hidden Treasure in the British Museum,” n.p. Cited 16 September 2007. Online: http://markdroberts.com/?p=153 ; also McRay in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 98. 180 McRay in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 99. 181 Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 153. 182 Ian Wilson, Murder at Golgotha: A Scientific Investigation into the Last Days of Jesus’ Life, His Death, and His Resurrection (New York: St Martin’s Griffen, 2006), 82-84. 183 Blomberg, “The Historical Reliability of the Gospels,” n.p. 184 Blomberg in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 49-50. 185 Geisler, “Can We Know the Bible is the Word of God?,” in Halverson (ed), The Compact Guide, 257. 186 Masood, The Bible and the Qur'an, 41.

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   

Contains 66 separate books. (27 in the New Testament) Composed in three languages: Hebrew, Greek, and some Aramaic. Speaks about hundreds of different topics. Written by authors of widely varying social status and occupation.187

The Book of Mormon was not composed this way. It was written by a single man, Joseph Smith, over the span of about two years.188 The composition of the Qur'an is also not comparable, since it was also the product of a single man, Muhammad (although subject to redaction after his death) which was dictated by him over a period of 20-22 years189, although it was not collated in final form until after his death.190 Yet despite the relatively adverse conditions under which the Bible was written, it remains a “continuous unfolding drama”191 and a congruous narrative. (It should also be noted that we possess four Gospels written by different authors that can be “cross-checked” against each other, as well as checked against the other New Testament authors.192) These amazing conditions under which the Bible came together are only some of the challenges that the Bible and the early Christians faced. An entire book, The Impossible Faith, has been written describing the many reasons why the Christian faith should have failed, but inexplicably succeeded.193 (Inexplicable, that is, unless something with the transforming power of the resurrection occurred.)

Certainly some difficulties remain in the New Testament (as perhaps should be expected in such a long, diverse and occasionally complex ancient text), but most proposed “contradictions” are not contradictions at all, properly defined. For there to be contradictions they would need to violate the law of non-contradiction, that is, claiming both that a thing is true and is also false (to “be and not be”) in the same way and at the same time.194 Most difficulties labeled “contradictions” do not fit this categorization, even if such proposed contradictions were to be granted just as they are proposed.

It's frustrating when critics (many of whom will be quick to chastise Christians for reading the Bible

187 For example, David was a shepherd boy who became king, Solomon (David's son) was born a wealthy and powerful king, Zechariah was a priest, Matthew was a tax collector, John was a fisherman, and Paul was a Roman citizen and well-educated Pharisee. See for example Masood, The Bible and the Qur'an, 8. 188 James A. Beverley, Religions A-Z (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2005), 140-141. 189 Beverley, Religions A-Z, 103. 190 Masood, The Bible and the Qur'an, 5, 18-40. 191 Geisler, “Can We Know the Bible is the Word of God?,” in Halverson (ed), The Compact Guide, 257. 192 Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable?, 169. 193 J. P. Holding, The Impossible Faith (Longwood: Xulon Press, 2007) 194 Gregory E. Ganssle, Thinking About God (Downer's Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 160-161.

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too “literally”) read certain passages (or verses) out of context or with unnecessary literalness and then claim a contradiction has been found. Douglas Groothuis notes that “The standard practice of the ancient historian is to think through possible ways of reconciling seemingly conflicting passages.”195 No one reading another great yet complex work of literature (such as Shakespeare) would, upon first encountering apparently conflicting statements, immediately dismiss the work as contradictory and worthless. Nor should they, and the biblical text should be read with at least the same appropriate respect with which other books are read, meaning that when a problem is found, reasonable attempts should be made to reconcile it. Mark D. Roberts relates the frustration he experienced with this issue while completing his PhD in New Testament studies at Harvard University:

[A]rguments in defense of the Gospel writers' accuracy either were not considered or were quickly rejected as a remnant of naïve fundamentalism. This seemed ironic to me, since these same professors often spent hours in class teasing out nuanced meanings out of ancient texts. ... Yet when it came to the possible historicity of the Gospels, nuance and thoughtful exegesis were often rejected in favor of what could only be called fundamentalist-like literalism.196 Let's examine two verses which may, at first glance, seem to be contradictory. In Matthew 11:14, Jesus says (referring to John the Baptist): “if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come.” (Elijah was an Old Testament prophet who many first century Jews believed would return some day.) However, when people asked John the Baptist if he is Elijah, he denied it: “They asked him, "Then who are you? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not."” (John 1:21) So who is right? At first glance it looks like a contradiction. But let’s see if there’s a reasonable explanation. What if Jesus was speaking figuratively while John the Baptist was speaking literally?197 That's a possible solution, but we’d need some evidence to back up this proposed synthesis. It turns out this solution is confirmed by Luke 1:17, where John the Baptist is said to come “in the spirit and power of Elijah”. This confirms that Jesus was giving a figurative statement, while John the Baptist was refuting the crowd’s question as to whether he was literally Elijah brought back to life.198

Many proposed difficulties can be alleviated by keeping certain common mistakes of biblical exegesis in mind199, others by recognizing that the various authors retell the stories in their own words with their own emphases (and also not necessarily in chronological order200) while still “faithfully and accurately” representing the facts.201 The vast majority of the remaining difficulties can be answered by simply studying passages in context and through proper knowledge of first century culture.202 In this regard, studying the culture of the first century can often provide many fascinating insights into understanding the New Testament writings.203 Based on study of the internal evidence of the New Testament, we can conclude that “the Gospels pass the internal test”, meaning that they are consistent within themselves. (See also the Manuscript Evidence: A Mountain of New Testament Manuscripts section above regarding the variations we do find in the ancient manuscripts.)

Even if we were to, for the sake of argument, say that the New Testament is a fallible document, everyone would still agree that the various New Testament texts cohere on the most central and major points regarding Jesus.204 In fact, an argument that the resurrection occurred can be built using only those historical facts in the New Testament that are so well attested that virtually everyone who studies them (whether they are Christians, Jews, agnostics or skeptics) agree upon them.205

Conclusion
Crucifixion was the most shameful means of death in the Greco-Roman world. It was called the most horrendous torture by Cicero (a first century BC historian) who said of crucifixion that “the very word 'cross' should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears.”206 The terrible pain a person hanging on a cross felt necessitated the coining of a new word to describe that pain: “excruciating.”207 Larry W. Hurtado comments regarding the inexplicable reaction of the earliest Christians to Jesus' dreadful and humiliating crucifixion:

[A]gainst all odds, as it must have seemed at the time, in Jesus' case crucifixion did not have the result intended by his executioners. ... Perhaps within only a few days or weeks of his crucifixion, Jesus' followers were circulating the astonishing claim that God had raised him from death and had installed him in heavenly glory as Messiah and the appointed vehicle of redemption. Moreover ... these claims were accompanied by an enduring pattern of devotional practices in which Jesus featured with an unprecedented centrality.208 The Bible, including the New Testament, claims to be God's word. If this claim is to be taken seriously, we should first ascertain that the New Testament that we possess is historically reliable. When carefully examined, the case for the reliability of the New Testament is remarkably strong. N. T. Wright sums up the case when he declares that “there is better evidence for the New Testament than for any other ancient book.”209 This is a compelling apologetic for the truthfulness of the Christian faith.

In summary, the New Testament:
     

was written within a short time frame from the events it records is based on multiple independent eyewitness testimony has been demonstrated to be consistent via the thousands of extant manuscripts has been confirmed to be historically accurate where it can be tested is confirmed by extra-biblical documents is internally consistent

206 207 208 209

Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 49. (Citing Cicero, Pro Rabirio, 9-17) Alexander Metherrel in Strobel, The Case for Christ, 198. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?, 4. N. T. Wright, forward to Bruce, The New Testament Documents, x.

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

has not been successfully impugned by criticisms against it

The New Testament's reliability will not, on its own, convince a person to accept the Gospel, God's gift of grace. However, knowledge of the New Testament's reliability may remove an intellectual barrier which prevents a person from taking the Christian Bible seriously, or put a “stone in their shoe”210 to encourage them to find out what the Bible really says, and why it is so critical to their life. To that end, the case for the reliability of the scriptures is a case worth making, and as we have seen it is a case which rests upon the “sufficiently reliable foundation”211 of centuries of scholarly study.

I did not grow up in a religious home, but came to faith later in life at the age of twenty-two. During my study at the University of Guelph I accepted Christ and became a follower of Jesus. I came to faith after a careful process of inquiry, and was not willing to take a leap of blind faith. I took a step of trust based on a firm foundation. To read a summary of how and why this occurred, please see my story on WhyFaith.com.

I hope to someday return to school to study philosophy of religion and/or religions of the world (formerly referred to as “comparative religion”) and earn a doctorate degree in a related discipline. I enjoy music of all kinds, video games (especially classic/retro games), reading, hockey, web comics, The Simpsons, and apparently writing long-winded and self-laudatory “About the Author” pages. I currently live in Markham, Ontario, Canada, and attend Scarborough Chinese Alliance Church (www.scac.org).

Thank you for taking the time to read this eBook! If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me at my website www.WhyFaith.com, because I'd love to hear from you!